


...and into the fire

by karasunovolleygays



Series: Valentine's Kisses 2020 [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Kyoutani is fearless, M/M, Post-Volleyball, Yahaba is scared but also tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karasunovolleygays/pseuds/karasunovolleygays
Summary: Yahaba learns a little bit more about Kyoutani every day, but his newest lesson may or may not have scared the shit out of him.
Relationships: Kyoutani Kentarou/Yahaba Shigeru
Series: Valentine's Kisses 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589239
Comments: 3
Kudos: 305





	...and into the fire

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my annual Valentine's Kisses Day 5: Throwing their arms around the other person’s neck, hugging them close before kissing them passionately on the lips.

February as a third year high school athlete is a strange time of the year. All the major sporting events are over for the season, and third years begin their painful transition back to studiousness so they get into the best college they can.

Yahaba Shigeru is no exception to this phenomenon. He might even be the poster boy of it, in a daze of essays and outlines after pouring everything he had into dragging his team to the prefectural finals. 

The strangest part of this post-volleyball limbo is how many extra spare moments he can steal for regular high schooler things, like drinking too much iced coffee in January or spoiling his dinner with meat buns from the corner store. And there is also this new thing going on between him and Kyoutani.

Somehow, the two of them have found a way to understand each other throughout the volleyball season, leaving them with an amiable ceasefire that almost resembles friendship.

So now they walk home together more often than not, and Yahaba isn’t blind to the fact that Kyoutani meanders through the most roundabout route to his apartment when they’re together and takes every shortcut possible when he’s going home alone.

They don’t talk much, but here and there their shoulders will brush together and neither of them look at the other for a while.

This day, however, Yahaba had woken up late, shown up to school late, and left late, and he’s too tired to blush when Kyoutani touches him. “Did you finish that physics paper yet?”

Kyoutani snorts. “What do _you_ think?”

That coaxes a chuckle from Yahaba. “That you haven’t even started it yet and won’t until the night it’s due.”

“Bullseye.” The corner of Kyoutani’s mouth quirks up almost too slightly to see, but Yahaba would never miss it for how rare it is. “Let me guess, you’re stuck on your closing paragraph and you’re obsessing over the citation page.”

Yahaba sighs heavily and nods. Kyoutani knows more about him that he’ll ever know about Kyoutani — an almost unfair advantage when they’re together with nowhere else they need to be. “You’re not wrong,” he admits.

“Figured.” Kyoutani bumps his elbow into Yahaba’s, and the blush Yahaba had thought he was too tired to produce blooms on his entire face. 

The rest of the way is heralded by a charged silence, during which Yahaba finds himself stealing glances at his former teammate and new . . . something. A year ago, or maybe even just six months ago, they could barely be in the same room for more than ten minutes without fighting. Now they seek each other out every day like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Thoughts solidly elsewhere, Yahaba barely notices when Kyoutani freezes next to him. “Huh?”

Kyoutani’s hands are bunched into fists at his sides. “Do you smell that?”

Yahaba sniffs the air, which does smell less than pleasant. “Yeah. And?” His eyes widen when Kyoutani points up at the sky, where thick plumes of smoke curl up into the air and blot out the sunshine. “Oh!”

Their pace picks up to an almost run, and it’s no mystery to Yahaba why that is. The smoke is gushing from somewhere on Kyoutani’s own street. By the time they round the corner onto the block, they’ve already accelerated into a flat out sprint. 

Fire trucks line the curb, along with a swarm of police cars and a few ambulances. Dozens of people stand outside and watch in shock as the house across the street from Kyoutani’s building goes up in flames.

Kyoutani pulls ahead of him and doesn’t stop until he reaches the caution tape warding off onlookers. Chirps of protest follow Kyoutani through the crush, with anyone in his way being pushed and elbowed out of the way until he makes it to where an old man is being carried off on a stretcher. 

When Yahaba finally catches up, he barely catches the tail end of the injured old man’s words. “— still in there,” he wheezes, the rest of his thoughts cut off by a gale of pained coughing.

“Still in there?” Yahaba muses aloud, but when he catches the way Kyoutani’s eyes blaze even hotter than the fire enveloping the house, his breath freezes in his chest. “Someone’s still in there, aren’t they?”

Kyoutani nods. “Puka.”

“Puka?” Yahaba asks, the name unfamiliar, but Kyoutani doesn’t answer. Instead, he peels off his jacket and shirt, ties the shirt around his face, and puts the jacket back on. His heart stutters in his chest when he realizes what Kyoutani intends to do. “You can’t go in there!”

“Yes I can.” Kyoutani rolls his shoulders before vaulting over the caution tape and through the gaping door. 

Emergency personnel call out to him, warning him to stop, but Kyoutani does what he does best — whatever the hell he wants. Every second Kyoutani is in the blaze, something constricts in Yahaba’s chest and he begins to shake. 

_This isn’t how this is supposed to go_ , he mutters to himself, maybe aloud or maybe not. They’re high schoolers. They’re supposed to eat junk food, stay up too late, and have fun they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives. 

The rest of their lives is the part that makes Yahaba’s stomach roil when he watches a portion of the roof collapse.

Swallowing around the knot in his throat, Yahaba blinks back tears brought on partly by the smoky air and the rest by sheer panic. “KENTAROU!” he cries toward the building, despite knowing there’s no way Kyoutani can hear him.

Another portion of the roof caves in, and a policeman’s iron grip is the only thing that keeps Yahaba from running into the building himself.

“Kid, you can’t go in there. We’re sending someone in to try to get him out, so let our people do their jobs.” The man sighs and shakes his head. “I wish I could tell you it will all be all right, but I won’t lie to you. Your friend did something dangerous, and it might be the last mistake he ever makes.”

Yahaba’s chest constricts, and he can barely breathe. He leans over, dropping to his knees because his legs can’t hold him up anymore. A hand claps his shoulder, but he wrenches away.

Tears roll down his face unchecked, and vomit sears the back of his throat. Not even the sight of a heavily shielded firefighter carrying an ax toward the front door could ward away the cloak of despair descending onto his entire being.

There are so many things he wants to say to Kyoutani. _You’re annoying! How could you scare me like this? I hate you for making me this upset!_

_I never got to tell you . . ._

Gasps rise from the horde of onlookers, and Yahaba looks up from his crouch because he has to know. He bolts to his feet when he sees a familiar head of ugly skunk hair and a white and mint jacket identical to his own emerge from the blaze right before the rest of the house crumbles in on itself.

This time, nobody is fast enough to stop him from tearing through the tape and to Kyoutani’s charred form.

Yahaba opens his mouth to scold Kyoutani for doing something so stupid, for scaring the hell out of him, for not giving him a chance to say what he needs to say before rushing into a potentially deadly situation. However, his words wither and die on his tongue as Kyoutani opens the front of his jacket.

A small orange tabby cat, its long fur smudged with ash, pokes its head out. Sharp claws are firmly anchored into Kyoutani’s bare skin, but he doesn’t protest at all while he gently strokes the cat’s fur, murmuring nonsensical assurances that Yahaba wouldn’t have minded only seconds before. 

And like he hadn’t just rushed headlong into mortal peril, Kyoutani takes the cat over to the old man in a wash of enthusiastic applause from spectators and emergency teams alike. The cat’s owner sobs as he clutches his furry friend to his chest, and this time, there’s no mistaking Kyoutani’s smile. 

Yahaba links his elbow with Kyoutani’s, not bothering to wipe away his old tears as new ones take their place. “Kyou — Kentarou, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry.” Kyoutani sends a tight frown in the old man’s direction. “Hibari-san doesn’t have anybody, and he just lost his house. Puka is the only thing he has left.”

“I —” Yahaba can’t choke out the rest. Instead, he takes Kyoutani’s hand and nods toward the apartment building across the street. With an audible sigh, Kyoutani tugs them into motion.

A cluster of paramedics try to shuffle Kyoutani toward an ambulance, but Kyoutani shakes it off with a gruff string of curses without breaking stride.

Yahaba guides them to the elevator rather than the stairs, with no opposition from Kyoutani on that front. As soon as the doors close in front of them, Kyoutani sags against the wall and coughs.

“Are you okay?” Yahaba doesn’t try to lift Kyoutani back upright, sure that’s the last thing he wants, so he lingers on the opposite side of the lift. “If you change your mind and want to the hospital, let me know. I’ll go with you.”

Kyoutani wrinkles his nose and huffs. “Chill out, blondie, I’ll live. I just want a shower.” Poking at his bare torso, he frowns at the blood smeared on his skin where the cat had clawed him in fear. “Damn it.”

“Let me help you get cleaned up, at least.” Yahaba eyes the injury and bites his lip. “Those look like they hurt.”

An objection is poised to roll off of Kyoutani’s tongue, but Yahaba’s sharp glare heads it off. “Fine,” he grunts, crossing his arms in a pout.

In Kyoutani’s apartment, which he shares with his dad, Yahaba’s charge dutifully stays still while a wet washcloth tabs away the black smudges on his reddened face. “I don’t know how you did it, but you’re in pretty good shape considering how crazy what you did was.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” 

Yahaba’s hand stills, and he admits, “But what you did was really brave, even if it was stupid.”

Kyoutani’s fingers curl around Yahaba’s wrist, and their eyes meet. Shirtless Kyoutani rises to his feet, with barely a hair’s breadth between them. His palm drifts up to cup Yahaba’s cheek. “Hey, blondie,” he murmurs, his thumb stroking the soft skin under his eye. 

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.” 

The sensation of Kyoutani’s rough fingers on his face sends a shiver of sensation through Yahaba. It’s new but not much of a surprise, he muses after mulling over the day’s events. He already knew something has been percolating between him and Kyoutani over the past few months, but not being sure if Kyoutani would walk out of that fire alive makes a few of those thoughts far clearer than they had been the day before.

Throwing his arms around Kyoutani’s neck, Yahaba tugs them the rest of the way together and presses his mouth to Kyoutani’s for an air-stealing kiss. Strong arms band around his waist, and Kyoutani meets Yahaba’s lips with equal gusto. 

When they tear apart, both of them winded, Kyoutani rests his forehead against Yahaba’s and closes his eyes. However, his eyes fly right back open when Yahaba starts to giggle, softly at first but finally dissolving into a full belly laugh.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Kyoutani grumbles. 

Yahaba waves off the question. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking I probably should’ve done that before you ran off into a giant fire in case your dumb ass got crispy fried, but you’d have just been annoyed I was wasting your time.”

“I —” Kyoutani’s objection drowns in red cheeks. “No, I wouldn’t get mad.”

“Does that mean —” Yahaba cups either side of Kyoutani’s jaw and forces him to look Yahaba in the eye. “So you _have_ always liked me.”

Kyoutani rolls his eyes and shakes off Yahaba’s grip. “Oh hell no. I might have had a thing for you for a long time, but I sure as hell didn’t like you for most of it.”

“Ken . . .” Swallowing hard around a knot of emotion he doesn’t care to identify, Yahaba feathers one last kiss to Kyoutani’s lips and grins. “I didn’t like you for most of it, either.”

The two of them linger deep into the evening, exploring this new aspect to their relationship. It may have taken a stupid stunt and a few scratches, but Yahaba thinks they have always been headed this direction all the while.


End file.
